With the advent of the Internet, advertising over more interactive media has become popular. Advertisers have developed several strategies in an attempt to maximize the value of such advertising. For example, advertisers may place advertisements on home pages of various web sites (e.g., news web sites, search engines, etc.). In another example, an advertiser may attempt to target an advertisement to a more narrow audience, thereby increasing the likelihood of a positive response by the audience. For example, a hotel in Las Vegas may promote special discounts on a travel website, specifically on the web pages directed to Vegas vacations. Generally, an advertiser will determine such targeting manually.
Despite the initial promise of website-based advertisements, there remain several problems with existing approaches. Although advertisers are able to reach a large audience, they are frequently dissatisfied with the return on their advertisement investments. As the advertisements are oftentimes overly general or specific, most end-users are bombarded with irrelevant and sometimes annoying advertisements that are of little value. An end-user will generally not be interested in the advertised service or product if it is of little or no relevance to the end-user's needs. However, tailoring relevant ads to each user can be very expensive.
Further, some ads can contain inappropriate or offensive content, especially for certain audiences such as children. Other ads may link to inappropriate content. Still others may include a “broken” link that fails to direct a user's browser to an intended website. Again, the cost of checking links and screening inappropriate content in every ad can be very expensive.
These and other drawbacks exist with current systems and methods.